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One Day, Two New Books
The Guide for a Single Man and The Guide for a Single Woman are finally here and available for your consumption.
Paperbacks can be purchased on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or FGPress.com (special bundle available!).
Ebooks are available for Kindle, the iTunes store, and other formats.
I'm very excited about these two novels and can't wait for you to read them. These two books aren't sequels, or prequels, but what I'm calling equals. Two comedic novels that can be read in either order to learn both sides of the story of…
...two men
...two women
....and one night of bar-hopping in New York City.
First week orders are crucial for building sales momentum, so if you have any desire to read the books I'd love if you could order them right now.
If you need some furthur encouragement, for this first week, my publisher is offering autographed bookplates and other schwag if you just email proof of a purchase with your mailing address to firstname.lastname@example.com.
Thanks for listening, thanks for ordering, and thanks for all your reviews on Amazon and Goodreads--those are also absolutely crucial to the books' further success.
And, please, tell the men and women in your life about The Guides by clicking these special links for either Twitter or Facebook.
As always, thank you so much for your support and I promise not to bug you again,
My New Books (Yes, That's Plural)
Family, friends, followers, fans, fellows and females and perhaps a few other f-words...
In just 22 days, on October 28th, I will be doing something I believe only one other author has ever done before--releasing two novels on the exact same day.
The novels are called The Guide for a Single Man and The Guide for a Single Woman. These two books aren't sequels, or prequels, but what I'm calling equals. Two comedic novels that can be read in either order to learn both sides of the story of…
...two men
...two women
....and one night of bar-hopping in New York City.
Right now you can pre-order the books on Kindle, iBooks, and FG Press. Physical copy pre-orders will be up on Amazon soon.
If you've liked any of my past books, you'll love these two books.
If you've discovered my writing from places like Esquire, MTV, First We Feast, and Playboy these books will be a great way to jump into my fictional works.
This is easily my most ambitious work yet and I'm extremely proud of the final product.
Pre-orders are crucial for building sales momentum, so I'd love if you would pre-order one or both books before the big release date on either Kindle, iBooks, or FGPress.
And, please, tell the men and women in your life--whether they're single or married, young or old--about the books by clicking these special links for either Twitter or Facebook.
As always, thank you so much for your support,
(Don't waste your time Googling it. That one and only one other author--to my knowledge--is Mr. Stephen King.)
Email me at email@example.com
Twitter: @aarongoldfarb
Facebook: aarongoldfarb
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And I Am an Alcoholic
A never-before-released short story I wrote a year or so ago. I had totally forgot about it, just stumbled upon it, and though I should release it.
And I Am An Alcoholic
by Aaron Goldfarb
Adam had been going to meetings for a solid month but had yet to speak. Every Wednesday afternoon at 4, he'd drag his ass to the YWCA basement, and just sit there and listen. He didn't know if that was technically "allowed," but these didn't exactly seem like the kind of people who followed everything to the letter of the law.
Typically between seven and eighteen attended the meetings, drawing from a group of four dozen Adam would have estimated. There were nine of them at this week's meeting. Next to Adam sat Cindy. She was only in her thirties but looked like she'd been around for Armstrong's moon landing. The previous week, she'd told an unbelievably disgusting story about once having given a homeless dude a blowjob for a sip—just a sip!—of his booze. If Adam wasn't repulsed enough, Cindy then went into graphic detail about the odor that blasted her face when the pulled down his jeans in that back alley. About the stray lint and mold—yes, she said mold!—caked onto his matted pubic hair. About how she thought she even saw a critter—a louse or a crab!—but how she went through with it any way because she had no other options. Fuck, just so she could have a long tug from his Early Times.
Thank you for sharing, Cindy.
Across from Adam sat a worthless blob of shit named Charlie. Charlie wore dusty overalls, flannel shirts, and starched stiff hats with a rope across the back of the bill and patches on the front face explaining what kind of veteran he was, if you knew how to comprehend those kind of things. He attended all the meetings, every single week, and always had a new, boring ass story to tell everyone. Last week he had told one about the time he drank so many "Blue Lights" while ice fishing that he'd passed out with one of his hands down the hole, only to wake up with severe frostbite. But, Adam quickly noticed he still had and was using both his hands and all ten fingers—one and five to drink the shitty Folger's Crystals, the other and five to literally dunk a donut into the aforementioned shitty coffee—that the story didn't hold much weight in Adam's mind. This week, Charlie had already wasted ten minutes on another lame-o tale. Adam's mind drifted during it as he inhaled the strong stench of chlorine from the swimming pool on the same level, listening to the shouts from some old lady Water-obics class, Adam just anxiously waiting for the next person to tell their stories as Charlie refused to stop gabbing in the way old people do. Going on and on about the time he chugged so much red wine he fell asleep in the audience during his daughter's ballet recital. That's what red wine—and children's ballet!—usually makes you do, thought Adam. Yawn.
Thank you for sharing, Charlie.
Next to Charlie, amazingly, actually listening to his boring story, even nodding along in sympathy, was this dork Rob. It wasn't quite clear why he attended these meetings as he seemed to have his shit together. All of Rob's stories were predicated on the fact he'd once been a successful broker for J.P. Morgan. Vice President. Nice house. Nice car. Nice wife. Boring life. So he'd said. Until he'd gotten a homebrewing kit as a gift one Christmas and fallen in love with the hobby.
Soon, Rob was spending what little free time he had in the family garage brewing beer. He had little time but he had a whole lotta money and he eventually decided to quit his day job and open a craft micro-brewery in an abandoned warehouse in Orange County. Heroes & Villains Ales & Lagers he called it. Adam thought that was, admittedly, a cool start to a story, but unfortunately Rob's stories never got more interesting than that. Each week was just another pathetic installment about how the brewery hemorrhaged his money, forced him to cash out (with penalties!) his 401K, lost him his wife and eventually his house, and left him with nothing…except to resorting to drinking himself blotto every single night on, you guessed it, his own beer that no one else wanted to buy in the first place because it was shitty beer. How circular. How boring.
Thank you for sharing (another shitty story), Rob.
"OK, who's next? You ready yet, Adam?"
Adam looked around nervously at all the anonymous faces he knew more things about than any of his own family members, friends, co-workers. The sad faces of generally the same people he saw every single week, the same boring people with the same boring, shitty stories he'd now been subjected to for a month. He was beginning to wonder if his idea would ever even pay off.
"No. No. Sorry, no, Mike. I'm just not…ready…to share yet."
"And that's OK, Adam. With time. I'm still glad you've taken the first step to attend these meetings, though. That's the most important thing. And I hope you're learning that…we're just like you. All right, all right, then who's next? Perhaps you, sir. I don't believe we've met you before, is this your first meeting…?"
"Uh…Shawn. Not yet, no. I'm Shawn. Yes, this is my first."
"Hi Shawn!"
"And…I, uh, am an alcoholic."
Shawn wasn't that old, or bad looking, but he looked like he had very recently been young and very good-looking. With a slightly receding hairline masked by a skilled haircut, nice clothes and expensive shoes, one could have never told that Shawn was an alcoholic. Alcoholics, they're just like us! thought Adam.
"I grew up drinking from an early age. That's what life's like in a showbiz family. Uh, sorry, if you didn't know, my father is—"
"Uhn uhn uh. No need, Shawn."
"Right. Well, you'd have heard of him and you wouldn't need IMDB, that's for sure. There were always lavish parties around my house. Kids were treated like adults. And by that I mean we could do what we wanted. What was our maid Flora going to do when she caught me nipping my old man's Cognac? Rat on me and risk losing her job, getting herself FedExed back to fucking Peru?! What caterer was going to stop me from guzzling champagne at my father's 50th birthday party back when I was only 11? And risk out on a massive tip at the end of the night? No way. No fucking way.
"And it was no way for a child to be raised. My wealth and success were a guarantee I didn't need to be good at school or sports…or life. I only needed to be good at doing nothing. And when you have nothing to do, boozing is the easiest 'something' to do. Soon I was drinking before school and after school. Sometimes even during. Vodka in my OJ carton. I'm not sure whether no one noticed…or no one cared. I'm not sure which would be worse.
"At age 13 I lost my virginity to a very famous child star who now is also in rehab—my pops was working with her. Now I was addicted to sex too. I know what you're thinking: all horny little teenage boys are addicted to sex. Yes, I'm sure that's true. But very few have the fame, wealth, access, and controlled substances I had. The stage mothers pimping out their daughters to me, just so afterward I might possibly mention to my father over dinner, 'You know pops, I really think little Maddie could resonate with a family audience.' Right, as if my family and I ever once even sat down together at the dinner table. Not once did we.
"By the time I reached my twenties, I was jaded. Nothing thrilled me any more. But, even worse, nothing scared me. And, when nothing scares you, you become a very scary human being."
Shawn looked on the verge of tears, on the verge of truly breaking up. Adam watched and listened in, for once at one of these loser meetings, completely riveted. This is what he had been waiting for.
"Three months ago was the last time I had a drink. I remember…I remember I'd been drinking and smoking weed all afternoon by my pool…and all by myself. Not cause I wanted to, but cause I really have no friends. I was drinking martinis. And by 'martinis,' I mean straight gin with just a single olive…"
Adam smirked, audibly, but no one else in the room did.
"I remember being hungry, really craving a burger, but since help didn't work weekends I had no way to easily get one. Of course, I have no idea how to cook. I don't even really know how to go to a grocery store. So, what do a guy like me do? I decided to drive to the Chateau Marmont nearby. Who does that?! Their stupid burger costs like $50. I didn't even change out of my swimsuit or put on any shoes, I just slung a towel around my neck and drove to the hotel.
"The valet said nothing because I always tip him well, and the bartender didn't either, perhaps because I was being somewhat behaved for once, famished, just quietly inhaling my cheeseburger, wiping my greasy, bloody face on the beach towel still hanging around my neck, drinking more and more 'martinis.'
Adam again smiled at the mention of 'martinis,' though no one else in the room did.
"I remember the bar beginning to fill up as it got later in the evening. Pretty people, beautiful people, successful, wealthy, famous people. Lindsey was there. That guy from Mad Men sat down beside me. I pretended like I didn't know who he was, even though we'd met at an Emmy's party a few weeks earlier. Soon we were doing coke in the bathroom.
"Eventually, women were surrounding us both. Skanks they were, pardon my…misogyny. But they were fucking skanks. There were always skanks around me, anxious to trade their attention, implants, and pussy for my money, drugs, lifestyle…access to fame.
"But like always, I'd soon grown tired with the scene and wanted to go home. But not alone. I was in no mood to be alone. So I picked out the three girls I wanted to have a foursome with. Yes, a foursome. You other men here probably don't even realize the certain, how should I put it, depravity that a very elite group of men like me have access to. And which you don't.
"Now, of course, none of these skanks have cars, certainly not ones I'd ride in, so we have to take mine. I may be wasted and making terrible decision after terrible decision, but somewhere in the recesses of my brain, there must have been one sober brain cell that doesn't think: 'Hey, drunk driving is bad,' but instead thinks: 'There's no fucking way the valet will ever give me back my car in my current condition.' It doesn't matter who I am, doesn't matter how much I tip him, there's simply too much liability (and future bad press) for a hotel of this stature. So I come up with a plan.
"Like Ocean's 11 the three skanks and I sneak into the valet parking lot and, after awhile, somehow find my car. Success! Only…one problem: how to start the fucking thing? Because who has my keys? Why the valet of course. All hope is lost. Until…I notice something. There's a tow truck idling in the lot and, wouldn't you know it, lucky me, the keys are in the ignition.
"I don't really recall the specifics, but the skanks and I must have flipped my Porsche into neutral to roll it up onto the tow, and we were soon in business. I peeled out of the parking lot, the tow truck dragging my Porsche behind it, two of the skanks in the front of my tiny Porsche, the ugliest of the three—and, believe me, she was still a fucking "10"—I'd forced to ride in the trunk. I'd never driven a tow truck before, certainly not shitfaced, so I wasn't used to the handling. As the tow truck sped out of the parking lot, the momentum sling shot the Porsche around behind it, taking out the valet stand. Luckily, the valets were inside so no one was hurt. Even more luckily…they called the cops on me.
"The police eventually found me in my master bedroom in the midst of transitioning from a threesome to a foursome. I'd left the front door wide open and parked the tow truck and Porsche right in my flower bed. According to the police report, I feigned ignorance, trying to claim I was actually a 'highly successful' tow truck driver, which I guess would explain all the women and the $3 million house. I don't even remember saying any of that.
"I'm being sued by the Chateau and the three women, my license is currently suspended, and I'll probably go to jail for a long, long while for driving two cars under the influence. It's somewhat unprecedented, even in this vile city. Grand theft tow truck, I suppose."
Again Adam smirked, thinking Shawn was trying to be funny. He wasn't.
"But that's all fine with me. I've actually never felt better because I haven't had a drink since that terrible night—and I never plan to have another one ever again."
The group applauded and shouted out encouragement to Shawn.
For once, even Adam joined in, trying the hide the huge smile on his face and the ideas swirling in his head:
"Thank you for sharing, Rob."
Adam was slightly late in arriving to his blind date at the Thai restaurant on La Brea. His date Bridget was fidgeting with her iPhone when he arrived, an annoyed look on her face. Her gorgeous face. When he'd discovered fidgety Bridget's profile on Match.com, Adam was smitten, even if her bio story was boring. He all but begged her to go on a date with him.
Email after email, she'd refused for awhile—until finally relenting after he'd suggested meeting at this particular pricy and trendy Thai restaurant. In his year of online dating, Adam had learned that suggesting a nice spot was usually enough to land a date, but never enough to land anything more. That sucked.
Before he'd even sat down, Adam apologized for being tardy, explaining that it had taken him forever to find a parking spot on the busy street, which it truly had.
"Well why didn't you just valet it?" Bridget snottily wondered.
"Because…well, let's just say, you don't want to know what happened the last time I used a valet."
Bridget raised her eyebrows, intrigued, as Adam took his seat and leaned in close, like he was sharing a state secret.
"So I was sitting around the pool, drinking a few martinis—and by 'martinis,' I mean straight gin and one olive, when I really had a craving for a cheeseburger…"
Bridget smiled, amused, subtly tucking her iPhone back into her purse.
"Which, before I go on, shall we order a couple drinks? Martinis for both of us?"
"Hi, my name is Adam. And I am an…alcoholic."
"Hi Adam!"
"If you live in this city and you're single, well, it seems you have to drink. Let me tell you, I've never been a particularly interesting guy. Smart and clever, maybe, but never interesting. Never been one of those guys with a so-called 'great personality." And I drive a real shitty car too. Not something like Shawn has. Had. Sorry, Shawn."
Shawn nodded, "no problem."
"I'd gone on countless dates. Internet dates, I couldn't even meet a girl legitimately. One date a week or so. None of them were a success. At all. You know why? Because I didn't have anything interesting to say. Whether you want to admit it or not, dates are entertainment for women. Dates are showbiz. You, the man, are the performer, and she is your paying customer. Although, you're usually the one actually paying—hey, how's that work?!
"So I decided to do something about it. I wanted to be one of those guys with cool, awesome, hilarious stories. A Tucker Max type. So I started going out and drinking heavily. Beers and vodka and shots. Whatever was put in front of my face, went down my face. Even Jaeger. And, I assumed, by simply doing that, by simply drinking a ton, that amazing things would start to happen to me. Crazy hookups and funny confrontations and maybe even a bar fight or two. Anything for a story, right? Then I'd finally be an interesting man with a few killer anecdotes to liven up any date.
"But you know what? None of that shit happened to me! Nothing happened to me, in fact, except I became the guy passing out and slobbering all over himself in the corner of the bar. That wasn't helping my sex life at all. So I put those days to rest and devised a new…life strategy. With help from all of you.
"Last week, I had a first date with this girl Bridget. Gorgeous. In my past life, I would have bored her to tears. Talked about the traffic and weather and street parking problems in Los Angeles and gotten so drunk that…who knows. But now—this time—because I was following this new strategy in my life, she hung onto every single word I said, even laughing until she had hiccups.
"And, let's just say, the night didn't end until morning."
Adam smiled, proud of himself, as the group applauded him, shouting out words of encouragement ("See, that's what happens when you clean up!" "Way to date sober!" "Good job kicking the habit!")
Adam couldn't wait for his second date with Bridget.
Adam couldn't wait to meet up with her at the bar that night.
Adam couldn't wait to hear another AWESOME story from Shawn.
Thank you for sharing, Adam.
If you enjoyed this, please check out my collection of short stories about sex, the sexes, and sexiness in New York City, The Cheat Sheet.
How To Make an Audiobook
When they say an author is "accessible," that usually means he's stupid enough to give out his contact information to anyone who would possibly want it. Like me. email@example.com. It's on my website, in my books, usually in the byline of freelance stuff I write, and probably even scrawled in some of New York's finer cocktail bar bathrooms. This means, I get a LOT of unsolicited emails.
Most of it is from nice, normal people who wants to offer a compliment, or a comment, or just shoot the shit. The shat is usually shot and I've even become friends with some of these people. Other emails are from crazy people. Those have their own special charm. But the email topic I get written to about most--aside from, "Honey, why don't you call your mother more often?"--is why I don't have an audiobook.
I never realized people listened to so many books. I suppose that makes sense considering my own little three-year experiment called "Trying to Sell Books You Have to Actually Read" has determined: no one really reads any more. Personally, I'd never listened to a single audiobook in my life, but if people wanted a "How to Fail" audiobook--and if that's what they were waiting for before they would finally "read" my book--I would give them one.
But how?
I obviously wanted to self-publish it, but that still brought forth two conundrums:
1. I'm a fine enough actor to narrate the book, but had no time nor energy to spend hours upon hours actually doing the recording.
2. Professional recordings can be expensive/at-home recordings amateur hour. I have a four-year-old macbook that constantly gives me the spinning rainbow of death and I live above the constant dynamite explosions of Second Avenue Subway construction. There was no I could record it at home. No way I was going to shell out an expected $2000-$5000 for professional recording time.
So I emailed Audible and asked them what the heck I should do.
And they pointed me toward ACX--one of the poorest promoted websites in the universe, but one of the most indispensable websites for authors.
[The rest of this post is going to read as if ACX paid me to promote them, but I swear they didn't. I simply had such a wonderful experience with the company that I want to reign down infinite hosannas on them...as well as let other authors know about this incredible (and incredibly poorly-promoted) website.]
ACX is essentially the Kindle Direct Publishing for audiobooks. It's even owned by Amazon, which makes it weird it's so poorly promoted. Oh well.
The steps in going from written book to audiobook are a breezy seven-fold:
1. Accept auditions
I uploaded the first chapter of "How to Fail" in late October just to see what would happen. My hopes were low, but within hours I was getting numerous auditions sent me. Human-beings across the world were actually recording Chapter One of my book, hoping I would select them to record the entire thing.
I got several dozen of these auditions within the first 48 hours. 100% of the auditions were "professional." Impressively so. Many didn't fit the bill whatsoever for the voice I had in mind. They were too gruff or too "old" or didn't quite hit the right cadences and notes of comedy for "How to Fail." A few men did really nail their auditions, though, and within days I picked one: Kevin Killavey.
2. Hire a guy
Kevin (and his sound engineer girlfriend) already had an impressive audiobook resume including a Phillip K. Dick work and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (which hit #1), so I knew I was getting some true pros.
Per ACX's contract, I could choose to either pay Kevin an hourly rate (usually in the $200/hour range), or simply give him 50% of future profits. Wanting to make him an invested partner--and not wanting to spend any of my own money--I chose the latter. This would also mean I gave all sales rights exclusively to Amazon, ACX, Audible, and iTunes for the next 7 years. That seemed fine to me considering there's really no other place to buy audiobooks nowadays (famous last words).
Before I fully hired Kevin, he had to submit the first fifteen minutes of the book to me in a timely fashion. He did, the recording was excellent, and we proceeded from there.
3. Hang out for a long time while said guy does all the work
I started this process in mid-November, and honestly wanted the audiobook to be ready for Christmas sales. Unfortunately, flawlessly recording and producing nine hours of material can take a damn long time. Fortunately, the author (me!) doesn't have to do anything during this process. I suppose you can crack an e-whip every so often, but Kevin's a busy guy (shooting zombie movies) and I wanted a quality audiobook produced more than I needed one quickly produced.
4. Listen to recording and offer edits
Sometime around early January, Kevin submitted to me his nine-ish hour cut of the entire book. Now was my turn to go to work. I carefully listened to the entire recording in whole, an open copy of "How to Fail" in front of me at all times. Truth be told, I was BLOWN AWAY at Kevin's comedy chops. All the comedic cadences, satire, and subtle ironic humor he NAILED. Just like it sounded in my head when I wrote the book. Even better, he was remarkable at shifting voice between characters (he could seriously pull off some Lennay Kekua shit if he wanted to). Though I assumed I would have done a fine job narrating my own book, I could have never done what he did. He truly made it come alive.
Throughout the entire nine hour recording, I only found 19 errors (mostly minor stuff, and much better than the number of errors in the paperback!). I submitted my error list back to Kevin, and then went back to sipping pina coladas on the beach.
5. Hang out for a shorter time
Within a few weeks, he re-submitted the recording to me. I checked to see if and how he had fixed all 19 errors--he had, nicely--and then I...
6. Approve book
Approved the book. Which involves clicking one button if I recall. Very simple. I also had to upload a cover JPEG. The rest of the meta-data of "How to Fail" was already re-appropriated from the book's Amazon profile.
Total hours personally invested: ~12 hours (9 of them listening to the audiobook)
Total dollars personally invested: $0
7. Sell book
Two weeks or so later, "How to Fail" the audiobook appeared on AUDIBLE.
A few days later, it appeared on both AMAZON and iTUNES.
And now, I ask that you please buy it. It's truly the best audiobook I have ever heard. If you hate reading, you'll love listening.
Listen to a free sample.
Comparing online gaming between tablets and mobile phones
Online casinos accessed on smartphones and tablets are becoming the most popular form of gambling over time. The convenience and ease of use improves every day and so people can't resist the lure of truly being able to play games and visit casinos from absolutely anywhere, at any time.
There are two ways that you can access casinos on tablets and phones. You can either visit the mobile version of the website and play from the browser, or you can download casino software and play straight from your device, although this can take up a lot of space on your hard drive so is probably more compatible with tablet devices than smartphones as you run the risk of slowing your device down. Smartphones are extremely advanced now, so you will be able to find online casinos that are compatible with your device, whatever device it may be, even non-flash apple products.
It is extremely convenient to play games such as Poker, Online slots, or Roulette on your phone as it's always in your pocket, and you can easily pull it out in moments of boredom and play one of the many casino games on offer for fun, no money. Even Apple now allow certain casinos to be downloaded as apps from their app store which is good news because one thing Apple is known for is quality control when it comes to their apps.
On Android of course you can download apps straight from the browser and most of them are likely to be compatible, you won't have as much problem finding games. Casino games like those found at www.iphonecasino.com.au are likely to run more smoothly on tablet devices due to the excellent graphics and the bigger size of the device. Although they are bigger to carry around, they still come in a convenient size, no bigger than a maximum of ten inches.
Everything I've Ever Written
Any biography of me currently lists me as having written one to perhaps three things. Of course, that's hardly the truth. The other day I was thinking about how much stuff one has to actually write before they can produce work good enough that the world actually wants it. So, I decided to make a real bibliography and list every major thing I have ever written, the vast majority of which, you will see, have never seen the light of day.
Fort's Brain [2000] -- (feature film screenplay) terrible college script.
Gatsby Returns [2001] -- (feature film screenplay) slightly less terrible college script.
The Good Life [2001] -- (feature film screenplay) co-written with Tim Calpin, named after a Weezer song. An American Pie rip-off written in 30 days. Landed us a manager (sort of) and then was optioned by an independent film producer who never paid us because he got divorced and his wife took him for a bath.
Cracker [2001] -- (feature film screenplay) co-written with Tim Calpin. A comedic safecracking movie.
Dandy [2003] -- (feature film screenplay) co-written with Tim Calpin. Dark comedy, won a Slamdance screenwriting award though I can't find any proof of that online.
How to Fail [2004] -- (feature film screenplay) Based on a great idea I turned into a terrible screenplay. For the moment...
Without Men [2004] -- (feature film screenplay) Dark comedy that posited a world in which all the men had died in wars and women were the only thing left.
Heroes & Villains [2005] -- (novel) Action drama about a police strike in New York.
Heroes & Villains [2005] -- (feature film screenplay) Written after I couldn't quite finish the novel and decided the concept might work better as a movie. It didn't.
A Better You!!! [2005] -- (feature film screenplay) Comedy optioned several different times by several different people. Made me some money but was never produced. I still think it's a pretty viable property.
Jesse's Toy Box [2006] -- (half-hour TV series) First four episodes and show bible written about a sex toys shop in bible belt Florida. Received a lot of interest and then Seth Rogen fucked up my shit. If I have a single "labor of love," it might be this. My favorite thing I've ever written and I still hope to make it one day.
Trophy Husbands [2007]-- (feature film screenplay) Optioned for a minimal amount by a man I'm pretty sure was a con artist. He now uses a different name online.
Proud Papa [2007] -- (feature film screenplay) Comedy about the world's greatest (accidental) sperm donor.
Lied Life [2007] -- (feature film screenplay) I can't even really remember what this was about, but I recall it was inspired by Michael Clayton and was probably pretty crappy.
Subbing [2008] -- (feature film screenplay) Co-written with Anton Azucar based on his years as a substitute teacher. Comedy in no way based on the-more famous Tom Berrenger vehicle.
Everybody's Famous [2008] - (feature film screenplay) Dark comedy satire about a dystopian world where everyone is...famous.
Par for the Course [2008] -- (half-hour TV series) Pilot episode and bible about life on a low-level pro golf tour.
Homeschool U [2008] -- (feature film screenplay) Dark comedy about the most home-schooled children of all time.
[redacted] [2009] -- (feature film screenplay) Comedy screenplay based on an idea by Craig T. Wood.
The Honey Trap [2010] -- (stageplay) I don't even like attending plays, but I still tried to write one. Received decent attention and a reading was nearly put together. I can't recall why it fell apart.
How to Fail: The Self-Hurt Guide [2010] -- (novel) FINALLY, the first major project of mine an Average Joe could actually consume!
The Cheat Sheet [2010] -- (short story collection)
The References [2012] -- (half-hour TV series) Co-written with Jake Hart. Pilot episode and bible based on the first short story in The Cheat Sheet. Currently making the rounds in Hollywood.
Drunk Drinking [2012] -- (essay collection) Self-published.
[redacted] [2013] -- (feature film screenplay) Co-written with Jake Hart. High-concept action movie. Currently making the rounds in Hollywood.
[redacted] [2013-2014] -- (novels) Three upcoming novels, manuscripts mostly finished.
Three Rings [2013] -- (one-hour TV series) Co-created with a Brooklyn producer.
17 feature film screenplays
4 television series created
1 stageplay
0 produced (as of right now)
7 books written
3 published (as of right now)
So there you have it. Wow, I can't even believe I've written so much stuff--that you can't ever read or see. Maybe 10% of work I've created has been released to the masses. That's kind of depressing.
I'd love my fellow writers out there to do likewise. Give it a try, and pass this along.
Aaron Goldfarb Holiday Gifts
This year, I wanted to offer personally autographed copies of HOW TO FAIL and THE CHEAT SHEET to the FIRST 25 people interested in each. Order by December 15 and I'll guarantee them by Christmas. I'll sign them to whomever and write anything you want.
FREE shipping in North America. (If you want it shipped elsewhere, send me an email firstname.lastname@example.com to discuss)
autographed, $30.00
autographed, $25
both autographed, $50
As I said, I'll write whatever nasty (or friendly) note you want inside of the books. Want to zing your boss, blast an ex, tell mom to suck it? Just tell me what you want me in the "special instructions" area on check-out. Like this girl, who wanted me to call a slutty friend of hers a slut:
I also still have some sordid HOW TO FAIL t-shirts available, perfect if you don't have a gift for mom or dad yet:
Sorry Jews. Just realized Hanukkah starts this weekend. SHIT.
Conversations With A Fan
I respond to pretty much every single person that writes me (email@example.com), but I never debate the merits of my writing with any one...unless they're a maniac.
Everything below is clearly (sic) and *SPOILER ALERT* too:
On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 6:10 PM, [redacted] wrote:
Do you know the three attributes to keep you out of prison???
They are marital status, drug use, and education
Also the ending was weak. Not everybody can paint,by the way painting are ex cons favorite occupations. This ending was like I won the lottery,. No character development of partner alcohol and gf promblems disappear?? Have you read american pyscho that was I thought you were going
Hope this helps [redacted]
From: Aaron Goldfarb
Date: Jul 9, 2012 9:07 AM
Subject: Re: Review
To: [redacted]
Thanks for writing. I enjoyed reading your note. As you might guess, I get a lot of emails (I suppose that's what happens when you put your email address on your book cover!). I respond to most all of them, but I usually don't address critical takes on my book. But something about your email compelled me to...
Do you know the three attributes to keep you out of prison???
They are marital status, drug use, and education
I didn't.
Now Stu is certainly not married, but aside from beer and booze he doesn't really do any drugs, and as mentioned in Chapter 1 (pages 1 and 2) he has a pretty good educational background: ("...a high I.Q., honors classes, a high school class presidency, athletic skills and accomplishments, science fair awards, writing prizes, a happy disposition, a winning smile, 99th percentile SAT score, "Most Likely to Succeed" senior year, the love of family, the adoration of friends and the opposite sex, and scholarship acceptance to a top fifty American university. My success continued in college where I graduated magna cum laude (Latin for "only drinks five nights a week," summa cum laude meaning "only drinks three nights a week")...
The third one you never used and the other two you were guilty. Why didn't your character not end in prison.
As Stu says, again in Chapter 1 (pages 4 and 5): As a failure, things can't get much worse. I'm not a ticking time bomb. There will be no climactic point at which said bomb explodes and I kill myself accidentally or get busted for shrooms at Newark International. I'm not Len Bias or Darryl Strawberry or Courtney Love or Keith Moon. I'm just your garden variety fuck up. I'm haunted by demons but they aren't very potent demons. They're lazy, failure demons just like their possessor. They stand on my left shoulder and goad me into drinking massive amounts of booze, stupidly spending my little money, falling ass backwards into unpleasant intercourse with fatties and uglies, screwing up job interviews, and calling the wrong kinds of people "douchebag."
Also the ending was weak. Not everybody can paint,by the way painting are ex cons favorite occupations.
As Stu mentions in Chapter 4 (pages 76 and 77), he had spent a whole summer painting houses and really enjoyed it: The only job I've ever enjoyed was a blue collar one. Back in the summer between sophomore and junior year of college, Keith convinced me that instead of interning at some stuffy office, waitering, bagging groceries, we should get a house in South Carolina and golf every day. Our first day in North Myrtle Beach, we saw a rich local loading some day-laborers into a pickup truck and asked him about work, needing some coin to facilitate our golfing lifestyle. Mr. Showalter was having his gigantic guest house painted and was thrilled to have two English-speaking boys up for the low-paying job. Low-paying for a true adult, sure, but for us, ten dollars an hour was phenomenal.
This ending was like I won the lottery,. No character development of partner alcohol and gf promblems disappear??
I'm not quite sure how the ending was like him winning the lottery. He is still a drinker of alcohol (though, as he mentioned on page 359, he just has "a few beers"), his girlfriend problems have only disappeared in the sense that he doesn't think about Ash any more, but he STILL has no real money and STILL sleeps on a couch--just this time in an apartment he shares in Queens with a buddy. Doesn't seem like much of a "lottery win" to me. Though you might disagree.
However, one thing has changed: his mental outlook on life. Whereas before Stu was depressed about all the things he didn't have in life that a successful person (like his rich friends) would have, by the end of the book he's learned that success in life is just in being happy. And you can do that simply by changing your attitude and accepting yourself. Which he has done.
Have you read american pyscho that was I thought you were going
Hope this helps [redacted]
It did. Hope my replies helped.
Would love if you'd add your review to my Amazon page.
Aaron note: Tip for fellow authors, you always ask for an Amazon review.
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 12:19 AM, [redacted] wrote:
Let me explain better the 3 attributes
Marital statue means your life as a child and life as an adult
You lost your job and you couldn't go tell your parents, so you have no support from them. Of course you aren't going to let a gf tell you what to do. I don't have to tell you a bunch of men would be dead or whatever if they didn't listen to women. That's marital status
Everybody works with stupid people, even though your character is highly educated, but he didn't use his schooling.another fact college graduates are about 4 percent.. you did a good job describing how miserable he was. That causes the drinking
Drinking makes you make bad decisions which your character did not. A lot of crappy things happen to him. What dumb things did he do????
Another fact. Do you know the highest group of people who commit suicide
They are homosexual teenagers, I thought it was interesting that you pick woman as your home saving for you rather than two men
One more thing I absolutely hated the chapter where everybody apologized. What did you learn, all of them were wrong where is the lesson on how to fail. Did you have a Holden moment or once everybody says sorry you are successful.
I have known many rich and smart people in prison. Its just that you hit all the danger points and managed to become successful
By doing what?????
I just was surprised by the ending.
Hope this help explain myself better [redacted]
On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 7:45 AM, Aaron Goldfarb wrote:
Thanks. I truly enjoyed reading that.
How Amazon Users Steal Books
This piece was bought by a major publication back in January, but they were too scared to run it. So I decided to take it back and just run it myself unedited.
How Amazon Users Steal Books
Aaron Goldfarb
The arrest of German-Finnish superhacker (and future Mike-Myers-in-makeup-and-a-fat-suit movie character) Kim Dotcom and the seizure of his website Megaupload has left college kids fuming and me concerned about one very important issue:
How will people continue stealing my books?
Back in 1970 Abbie Hoffman encouraged people to steal his book with a titular directive, but that old-fashioned way of illegally torrenting is not really practical any more. Mainly because you don't see bookstores around and even if you do they're now places for the homeless to hit the loo and wash up. Ditto with libraries, now mainly for the homeless to check their e-mail and look at porn. The death of paper is clearly going to have an apocalyptic effect on the homeless lifestyle more than the publishing industry.
Still, there are other ways to get books for free.
Some are legal like BookLending.com, Kindle's own Lending Library (though you'll need a $79/year Prime membership), and e-mailing authors with a sob story about how you love reading but can't scrounge together a few bucks since you were an English major in college and now can't get a job in this economy and therefore have to shamelessly beg for a free PDF.
Most others are illegal--depending who you ask!--with countless disreputable sites like Pirates Bay, Iso Hunt, and Torrent Room still yet to be shuttered by the U.S. Department of Justice. Have at it and I hope you (don't) find the FBI knocking on your door while you're in flagrante torrenting.
If stealing isn't your thing yet you still have a total disinterest in spending even a nickle on reading material, you'll need a little ingenuity and a lot of free time, but you can read entire books on your computer via Amazon's "Search inside" or Google Books look-through functions. As a recent Emory grad who brought this method to my attention told me, "No one in college pays for books any more. We always figure out a way to read stuff for free."
You say, but doesn't "Search inside" only allow you to see a few sample pages? In theory but not function. When you begin a search, you will typically be allowed to view the cover, copyright info (ha!), table of contents, and a few introductory pages before the pages quit going in numerical order and start randomly jumping ahead. For my book How to Fail, that jump-ahead occurs after page five, sending you to page nine, and that's fairly similar to other books.
At this point, you begin typing keyword guesses into the "Search Inside this Book" box on the left sidebar until you locate either the next page sequentially or one close to it. You have some wiggle room because every time you land on a new page via a keyword search you are afforded the ability to flip back and forth several pages from where you landed.
The key is figuring out words likely to appear on every single page. Amazon doesn't index commonplace words like "a" or "the"--though it does allow "this," "you," and "I"--so you'll have to focus on words commonplace to what you're reading. A Harry Potter book and you might guess "Hogwarts." The Steve Jobs biography and "Apple" or "asshole" might be good. My book and "failure" should get you all the pages you lack initially. With a +/- of a few pages granted for each search, for most books you'll only need one or two keywords to read every single page. Stealing, sure, but at least you have to think up an "Open sesame!"-like password to gain access. Though I agree with poker player and author Rafe Furst, who has used this method since 2007, but notes, "Personally, I find it tedious and not that satisfying to read a book (via "Search Inside") and end up buying the book if I'm at all interested."
Still, there's an even more ethically murky way Amazon users steal books that tops all the above. I discovered it recently when looking at back-end sales totals for Kindle copies of my books, noticing a column marked "Units Refunded."
I was baffled at first, "Who would possibly return an ebook?!" Especially ones like mine usually priced less than $5. But, month after month, around 4.5% of buyers return my books for a refund. I asked other authors if they were encountering similar numbers. Ben Nesvig, author of First World Problems: 101 Reasons Why the Terrorists Hate Us, told me he averages about 5% returns for his book. Another friend, a popular technologies writer, told me likewise, as did nearly all authors I surveyed. I put a call into Amazon and though they wouldn't give me any exact data, I'm guessing it would indeed hover at around 5%.
Now a normal person might assume these refunds were from people that accidentally bought a book, then returned it seconds later, like when you forget to ask for extra naan on a SeamlessWeb order and have to quickly edit it before the restaurant has begun fulfillment. But, I'm no normal person, I'm a money-grubbing author that never wants to have another day job. So I dug deeper and discovered something shocking:
"Books you purchase from the Kindle Store are eligible for return and refund if we receive your request within seven days of the date of purchase."
(To return and refund, go to Manage Your Kindle, click the actions tab for the title you'd like to return, and select "Return for Refund.")
Seven days? Who can't read a book in seven days?!
There are people buying ebooks, reading them quickly, then returning them for a full refund, like stay-at-home mom Elisabeth Gilbert who told me, "I have literally never spent money on an ebook since getting an iPad." Numerous other readers told me likewise. Though I didn't ask, I'm sure they also tuck the tags when they buy new clothes for a date, then take them back to Banana Republic in the morning.
"Those are their rules," explains Jon, a legal professional. "I don't feel like I'm stealing anything since Amazon allows this."
Maybe they shouldn't. Maybe Amazon should only allot 24 hours to make a return. Or not allow a return once you've read past page 20 or so, something they have the ability to monitor.
It's not like this is completely a modern technology problem, though modern technology makes it much easier to beat the system, and makes system-beaters far less guilt-ridden, especially during these tough economic times. "Why should I feel bad? I'm not stealing anything real," is the thought common to serial refunders like a Seton Hall student I spoke to. There's always been people who bought hardback books, quickly read them, then returned them, capitalizing on lax 30-day refund policies at most chains. Barnes & Noble even lowered their return time to 14-days back in 2008, sick of being used as a library. Bookstores average around a 1% return rate on paper books, but who knows how many of those were people just bummed out they were given Tom Brokaw's new tome as a Hanukkah present. (Interestingly, bookstores themselves return anywhere from 25%-50% of unsold books back to the publishers for a full refund.)
Ebooks are returned at five times the rate of physical books, because returning physical books is simply tougher. A physical book has to stay crisp and clean and it's a physical object you literally have to drive back to a physical location. Ebooks are frivolous possession-wise: a scroll of the mouse, a click of a button, zapped to your Kindle or iPad or iPhone in a matter of seconds, then returned six days later by reversing the steps. Stealing one isn't even zero-sum, literally an infinite number exist.
Seth Godin once told me, for a young author like myself, I shouldn't be worried about sales or even making money, I should be worried about building a "tribe" of fans, not coincidentally also the title of one of his best-selling (selling!) books. Likewise, Paolo Coehlo is a firm believer in simply getting his books out there electronically, going so far as to pirate his own work, which he feels has greatly contributed to the 65 million sales of The Alchemist alone. And, Cory Doctorow has famously said: "For pretty much every writer, the problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity."
So I suppose I should be thankful I'm building a tribe and becoming a little less obscure through electronic theft.
Having said that, if you truly want to get an author's book for free, there's a better way. Derek Jeter can't be the only person who gives his paramours personalized parting gifts.
A Sex Toys Shop, the Infomercial Man, and Trophy Husbands : The Screenplays of Goldfarb
For the longest time I didn't write books, I wrote screenplays. No, you've never seen any of these movies or TV shows because none of them were ever made (for a variety of reasons). Eventually, I got so fed up with writing stuff only read by my manager, my mom, and a few studio and network execs (or, more likely, their lowly assistants), that I decided to actually write something I knew the masses would get to enjoy. That was How to Fail.
Amazon now makes it very easy to share screenplays as part of their Amazon Studios, so I decided to dust off some old works and let you read these screenplays heretofore only read by manager, mom, and those lowly assistants.
Jesse's Toy Box was the first TV show I ever created and it's the rare labor of love I still hold onto in the hopes of getting it made one day. The premise: Ronnie Fish, a Brooklyn slacker, inherits a Christian bookstore in Florida when his uncle dies suddenly. However, upon arrival, Ronnie flips some letters on the marquee and converts Jesus's Joy Box into Jesse's Toy Box—Levy, Florida's first and only sex toys shop.
I shopped this project around Hollywood for most of the late-2000s, getting plenty of interest, but constantly hearing the same refrain: "A sex toys sitcom would never work." One day, I awoke to news from Variety that Seth Rogen (he was uber-hot at the time and taking meetings left and right) had just sold a similar premise to Showtime based simply on the premise. Even worse, he was tabbing his personal assistant to script and produce it! Of course, no surprise, some four years later, Rogen's pseudo-project has never aired, never gone into production, never even been written for all I know. Mine has and here you can check out the pilot episode script and a 25-page "bible" which details how the show would develop over four seasons-plus. I still think it could be a huge winner.
Trophy Husbands was one of those high-concept Hollywood ideas in which you merely need a title to know all about the project. The logline: Everyone's heard of a "trophy wife," but in Silicon Valley a group of ambitious young men is trying to make a startup business out of being the opposite: handsome, young "trophy husbands" married to, and trying to dupe old, rich women out of their wealth. I knew it was a project I had to have circulating in Hollywood ASAP because it was such an easy idea. Of course, again, bigger people than me sold the premise but it's still listed as "in development" on IMDB. I'm guessing it'll also never get made. I still think my script is quite sharp, funny, and worth a read.
A Better You!!! was probably the first really good script I ever wrote: For decades we've been inundated with infomercials trying to sell us stuff. Workout DVDs, books that "teach" you French in a week, and CDs that show you how to speed read. Who actually buys this crap?! Dallas resident Batch Holt does, though he eventually comes to understand that it takes more than 6-pack abs, super speed-reading abilities, and the DVD advice of a geeky dating guru to become A BETTER YOU.
This script was actually optioned by an indie producer and for the longest time looked like it was going to go into production. But one quickly learns that movies are so much harder to get made than you'd ever think and the producer wasn't able to quite raise the funds needed to begin shooting. I took a lot of meetings, had my hopes constantly raised--then dashed, and made a few bucks for my troubles, but the public has never got a chance to enjoy A Better You!!! until now.
Let me know what you think. If people enjoy reading these I'm happy to post some other screenplays I've written.
And don't forget, the offer for a free copy of Drunk Drinking ends on Friday!


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Grinnell College Announces 10-Member Selection Committee for $300,000 Annual Social Justice Prize
Program Honors Young Innovators, Organizations Advancing Positive Social Change; Committee Will Evaluate More Than 1,000 Nominees, Selecting Up to 3 for $100,000 Awards
Mar 08, 2011, 10:08 EST
GRINNELL, Iowa, March 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Grinnell College today announced the 10-member selection committee that will determine winners of the 2011 Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize. The award program, which received more than 1,000 nominations from 66 countries, honors individuals under the age of 40 who have demonstrated leadership in their fields and who show creativity, commitment and extraordinary accomplishment in effecting positive social change.
The selection committee will be chaired by George A. Drake, a 1956 graduate who served as Grinnell's president from 1979 to 1991 and is currently professor emeritus of history and president emeritus at the college. From 1991-93, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho, teaching English in a Catholic mission school.
Selection committee members will pick one to three winners to receive an award of $100,000, half to the individual and half to an organization committed to the winner's area of social change for a total of up to $300,000 in prize monies. The pool of nominees spans a diverse array of social issues, including hunger relief, childhood education, environmental issues, literacy, youth arts, fair housing, violence prevention, immigration, GLBTQ, youth services, hospice care, children's mental health and global peace, among many others.
In addition to selection committee chair Drake, the nine other members – largely Iowa-based – are recognized individuals who work for social change in various capacities. Their backgrounds, accomplishments and experiences reflect the diversity in both Grinnell and the state. These members include one representative each from the college's faculty, student body, alumni, staff and trustees, plus prominent individuals not formally affiliated with Grinnell.
- Rekha Basu, columnist for The Des Moines Register. She focuses on human rights, racial and gender issues, and cultural trends. Her byline has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, The International Herald Tribune and The Nation, among other publications.
- Monica Chavez-Silva, director of community enhancement and engagement, Grinnell College. She is responsible for building partnerships and identifying opportunities for Grinnell College's participation in community improvements.
- Laura M. Ferguson, M.D., member of the Grinnell College board of trustees and a 1990 graduate. She practices medicine in Grinnell and is a member of the Grinnell Regional Medical Center Board.
- Emily Westergaard Hamilton, executive director, Des Moines "I Have a Dream" Foundation and 2002 graduate. Her organization works with at-risk youth to help every student graduate from high school and go to college.
- Ben Offenberg, Grinnell College senior and student body president. He is a biological chemistry major, has lettered in varsity football and varsity track and field, and is a member of the Grinnell Mock Trial team.
- Suku Radia, president and CEO, Bankers Trust. He is active in numerous professional, economic development, educational and charitable organizations, including United Way of Central Iowa and the Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines.
- Suzanne E. Siskel, director of social justice philanthropy, Ford Foundation. She oversees efforts to mobilize philanthropic resources for social change and promote social justice throughout the world.
- Marsha K. Ternus, former chief justice, Iowa Supreme Court. As chief justice, she made the improvement of court oversight of child welfare cases a priority for the Iowa Judicial Branch.
- Eliza Willis, professor of political science, Grinnell College. She teaches courses on Latin American politics, global development, international political economy, and the political economy of developing countries and previously served as chair of the Grinnell faculty.
"We are delighted these 10 exceptionally talented, experienced and socially conscious individuals have agreed to be selection committee members for The Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize," said Grinnell President Raynard S. Kington, M.D., Ph.D. "In creating this prize program, we seek to recognize young individuals who embody our core values and organizations that share our commitment to change the world for the better. I am confident our selection committee members will bring extraordinary knowledge, sensitivity and passion to that goal."
The Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize directly reflects Grinnell's historic mission to educate men and women "who are prepared in life and work to use their knowledge and their abilities to serve the common good." Nominations were open to U.S. citizens as well as nationals of other countries and were encouraged across a wide range of fields, including science, medicine, the environment, humanities, business, economics, education, law, public policy, social services, religion and ethics, as well as projects that cross these boundaries. Special efforts were made to seek nominees who worked in areas that may not have been traditionally viewed as directly connected to social justice, such as the arts and business. No affiliation to Grinnell College was required.
Grinnell College is a nationally recognized, private, four-year, liberal arts college located in Grinnell, Iowa. Founded in 1846, Grinnell enrolls 1,600 students from all 50 states and from as many international countries in more than 26 major fields, interdisciplinary concentrations and pre-professional programs.
Media Contacts
Kate Worster
Melissa Connerton
Grinnell College
CooperKatz & Company for Grinnell College
(641) 269-3404
(917) 595-3039
SOURCE Grinnell College

subset: commoncrawl


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Reel World
Spirited Scripts
InterTribal Entertainment, Southern California Indian Center, Inc. and VSA Arts of New Mexico are inviting Native American storytellers to submit a 10-page screenplay in any genre that reflects the American Indian experience. The fourth annual Creative Spirit Script-To-Screen Initiative is designed to provide employment and training opportunities for American Indians in film production. Two winning 10-page scripts will be chosen by a panel of judges from the entertainment industry and the Native American community. One script will be produced and screened as part of the second annual Two Worlds Festival of Native Film and Theater in Albuquerque this September. The other script will be produced by InterTribal Entertainment in Los Angeles sometime in the fall of 2009. Visit nativefilm.com to view trailers of previous Creative Spirit productions and to download guidelines and submission forms. There is no entry fee, but scripts must be postmarked by Friday, June 26.
Film Review
My Sister's Keeper
Kids = cute. Sick kids = sad ... and cute.
There are those who maintain that whole milk, gathered in the "old-fashioned" way—that is, gently hand-pulled straight from a cow's udder and quaffed fresh from the milkmaid's bucket—is among the most pure and genuine of food experiences. Those selfsame purists would also say that milk obtained by more modern methods—say, from an industrial milking machine on the floor of some massive factory—is more of a soulless, mechanical product. I don't know from farms. But I do know movies. And there's a vast difference between a tearjerker that earns its emotions in a seamless and organic manner and one that cranks up the waterworks with all the subtlety of a fireman attacking a fireplug with a monkey wrench. My Sister's Keeper falls squarely in the latter category.
Film Review
Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight and Herb & Dorothy
Double-featured art documentaries inform Guild Cinema this weekend
When one man's wadded-up piece of paper is another man's exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, the infinite mystery—and absurdity, perhaps—of the art world is clearly evident. Two documentaries dealing with people who penetrated, comprehended and conquered the often confusing realm of aesthetics take an artful, layman-friendly look at differentiating between what is visually ordinary and what is extraordinary.
Idiot Box
Learn-ey Tunes
"Man vs. Cartoon" on truTV
The best science programs are the ones in which things blow up a lot and there is the distinct, recurrent possibility that someone could get hurt very badly. I can't vouch for the fact that viewers actually learn much from these sorts of shows, but they're definitely more entertaining than that high school science lab you had.


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2 Nov 2011 14:14:07 PM
"Where Are They Now?": Famous Victims Edition
(Don't worry Bob, it can only get better from here. That has to be true at least once in a while.)
Imagine this scenario; you're an up and coming fighter in the cut-throat world of MMA who's finally earned his shot at the big time. The packed stadium, the camera crews, the ring girls, they're all there. And best of all, your fight is about to be broadcast for the world to see. "I've made it," you think as you bathe in the bright lights shining down on you.
But then, before you know what hit you, you're looking up at a large, possibly Rastafarian man, who's asking if you know where you are. And for the rest of your life, you are dubbed "that guy who got destroyed by ______ ." No matter what you accomplish, you will always be known for one bump in the road that just about everyone happened to witness. Well, here at CP, we know this story all too well, so we decided to check up on a few of these poor suckers, VH1 style, and find out what they were up to. Because knowing is half the battle. Enjoy.
Dos Caras Jr.
What (most of us) know him for: As one of the victims of the greatest MMA technique of 2003.
What he's been up to: As it turns out, Dos Caras Jr. has actually had a rather successful career since nearly being decapitated by Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic back at PRIDE – Bushido 1. His real name is Alberto Rodriguez, and he actually wasn't that bad of a fighter. Honestly, considering he both wore a mask and went by a fake name, he was a pretty damn awesome fighter, and easily the most successful. After dropping a unanimous decision to Kazuhiro Nakamura at Pride 27, "Two Faces" went 6-1, with all wins coming by way of stoppage. He even managed to pull out a head kick KO of his own back in 2010 against 3-8 fighter Arthur Bart.
Where he is now:Read More DIGG THIS


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This guide is suggested for students of SOC 1000.
Sociology Research Guide - For more resources in sociology.
Here is a selection of databases that will help you find peer-reviewed articles. Contact me for further suggestions.
Watch this short tutorial to learn the ins and outs of Sociological Abstracts:
Your gateway to the full text of journal articles!
Content is available via the following links: Click on the Article link(s) to go to the full text.
Request from Villanova document delivery or another library: Submit an interlibrary loan request online. It takes on average 3-5 days for the article to arrive via email.
Full text linking:
Formatting references in APA style
A scholarly journal article is a lengthy journal article based on primary research or original theoretical speculation and published in what is often referred to as a peer-reviewed journal. Most scholarly journal articles in the social sciences include the following elements:
Author name and affiliation
Introduction & literature review
Data & measurement
Analysis & results
For a more detailed description of the differences between scholarly journals and popular magazines click here.
Below is an image of part of the first page of a scholarly article:
[Renzulli, L. A., & Evans, L. (2005). School choice, charter schools, and white flight. Social Problems, 52(3), 398-418. ]
You can find a detailed description of the peer-review process on Wikipedia.
Why not? Here are some arguments in favor of library databases:
Timeliness: Google favors older publications, which is a problem in the social sciences.
Full text availability: Links to the full text will not work when you are off campus and Google will not link you to interlibrary loan forms or print holdings.
Quality: Google does not limit to peer-reviewed journals
Quantity: Too much to sort through!
The Library has a large number of subject specific online encyclopedias with up-to-date articles on your paper topic. They will lead you to exhaustive and well-researched articles that are written and signed by scholars.
Here is a link to a 2008 article on school choice from 21st Century Education: A Reference Handbook. Notice the long and detailed bibliography that could jump start your research.
keyword search: "charter schools" AND statistics
subject search: "charter schools" AND "case studies"


text: Report: Almost one-third of Yahoo, Google searches come from mobile Published on October 11, 2013. Charlottesville, Va.—Yahoo Inc. is now seeing 31% of its organic searches coming from mobile devices, according to a report by search and digital marketing agency Rimm-Kaufman Group, Charlottesville. According to Rimm-Kaufman's "Q3 Digital Marketing Report," Google Inc. saw 30% of its searches originating from mobile sources. However, Rimm-Kaufman found that figure may be an underestimate because mobile searches from Apple devices do not pass search terms to third parties and because Google has an outsized share of the organic search market. Google maintains a 78.1% market share of all organic searches, compared with Bing's 10.5% and Yahoo's 9.1%. The Rimm-Kaufman study is based on a third-quarter analysis of clients' activities on the major search engines. Most Popular In this article: BtoB


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It's The DC Bust Bank - Batman. Your favorite DC super heroes and villains are ready to help ypu save some money! Fully painted and highly detailed functional plastic bank features coin slot on back and removable cap lock on bottom. Use it either as a bank to store your loose change or as a sculpture to place on your shelf. Sold as eaches.


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The first signs that a child is coming down with chickenpox usually include some combination of the following:
Moderate fever.
Sore throat.
A day or two after these first symptoms appear, a child with chickenpox will develop the tell-tale rash, usually characterized by the following:
It starts out flat and reddish, centered on the trunk of the body.
A day or so after it first appears, it spreads to the extremities, neck, and face, and turns from red splotches into masses of tiny pimples.
It is intensely itchy.
A day or two after these first symptoms appear, a child with chickenpox will develop the tell-tale rash, usually characterized by the following:
The more intimate and more frequent the exposure to chickenpox, the more severe the case will be. This fact has very important implications, especially if you have more than one child. Children in different stages of the disease should be separated to minimize their exposure to each other. With minimal exposure, the second child to become ill is likely to have a less severe case of chickenpox, with less discomfort.
Chickenpox typically begins with a headache, fatigue, loss of appetite, and fever, much like any other viral illness. A day or two after these early symptoms, a rash of flat, red, splotchy dots erupts, usually beginning on the chest, stomach, it and back, and spreading a day or so later to the face and scalp.
The red dots of the rash soon come together to form clusters of tiny pimples, which then progress to small, delicate, clear blisters. Some children develop 3 lesions; some develop 300. Once the rash erupts, expect new crops of blisters over the next three to five days. Scabs, which are the last phase of the pox, form five to six days after the blisters develop. These scabs last for one to two weeks before falling off, exposing tender, freshly healed skin.
Over the course of the disease, the rash shows signs of all the different phases of chickenpox, with some areas that are splotchy and red, some areas of new blisters, areas where sores are crusting over and scabbing, and areas of healing. es From eruption through healing, each and every pock is very, very itchy. It is the extreme itchiness of chickenpox that causes the greatest torment.
Chickenpox can be contracted at any age. Because infected adults tend to feel much sicker and more miserable with this disease than youngsters do, it's probably best to have it as a child. Once you have had chickenpox, it is highly unlikely that you will ever suffer through it again.
Conventional Treatment
Acetaminophen (in
Tylenol, Tempra, and other medications) is helpful in relieving pain and bringing
down fever.
Note: In excessive amounts, this drug can cause liver damage.
Read package directions carefully so as not to exceed the proper dosage for your
child's age and size.


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Kennedy Kressler is a 89 lb, 30 year old beauty from Portland, Oregon. She is 5'3 and her favorite position is .
Kennedy Kressler currently has 20 sets and 2 videos in our member's area
Download a zipfile of this photoset
All models found on this website were OVER 18 years of age when photographed. All paperwork pertaining to Title 18 U.S.C. 2257 is on file and available for inspection.


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Find out about the story and the people involved in making this project happen.
BOOM is available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Spotify and basically wherever you listen to podcasts.
Don't want to miss any updates? Maybe see some photos? Follow the show on multiple platforms.
A lot of people work to make this happen. If you like what you hear, please consider donating though Patreon or Flip Give.
Find tees, sweatshirts, stickers and more at our shop through TeeSpring.
The project is a completely different kind of endeavor for Observer Pictures. While the last two projects were short films, BOOM is going to be the first audio project as well as the first serialized one.
BOOM is a story about loss and recovery. Porter, a computer technician and outdoor enthusiast, must come to terms with the murder of his best friend--love of his life--Genevieve. It's far from an easy road. Porter suffers through a long physical recovery as well as a mental one. The lead detective on the case believes Porter is the killer, and his two best friends are trying their hardest to get him back to the guy he once was.
The first season plus two bonus episodes are available now. Season 2 will be available weekly beginning
Friday, March 2
. For more character information, check us out on
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Garrett DeLozier as PorterCharity Spencer as GenevieveBrian Irwin as LukeAvalon Herron as DaxWendy Keeling as Detective HaileyMelinda Paul as MyraCourtney Holly as AlisonTheren Womack as Dr. AbbottStephanie Hall Wedan as Mrs. Owens Nurse CharliePeter Aylward as Mr. Owens DanPaige DeLozier as Connie AnnaDavid Hiller as Harry IsaacMark Schlicher as Dr. Dill Mr. HanoverDalila Ferrer as Detective Santos (Season One)Kristen James as Detective Santos (Season Two)Michael Ahr as the Narrator
Director/Writer - Faith McQuinnProduction Sound - Matthew L. Hankins (Season One)Production Sound - Karl Huber, Pod Studio 1 (Season Two)Assistant Director - Amanda Lorraine2nd Assistant Director - Van DonnellOriginal Music - Brian IrwinSound Design and Mix - Joshua SuhySound Editing - Faith McQuinnSound Mixing - Michael A. Bowers (Episodes 1-3)Foley - Joshua Shuy and Josh HastickCasting - Courtney EdwardsProduction Assistant - Ryan Allen
For as little as $1 a month, you can support the cast and crew. Plus there are rewards! (And everyone loves rewards.)Location: Phone: Email:
Curriculum Vitae
I currently teach courses in the sociology of health and medicine, spatial analysis of social issues, environmental sociology, quantitative research methods, and social policy.
My scholarly interests are currently focused on two primary areas—the social determinants of health and the spatial analysis of social issues. With respect to the former, I am exploring racial and class disparities in blood lead levels in young children. Elevated lead levels have been linked to both cognitive and emotional outcomes in children, as well as related social outcomes throughout the life course, such as educational attainment. This research highlights the role of social factors in shaping health outcomes that ultimately inform long-standing questions about the mechanisms and processes behind the social reproduction of inequality across generations. A second body of research uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map the distribution of community hazards, resources, and events to better inform our understanding of the spatial dimensions of inequality and poverty. This research is connected to my course on the spatial analysis of social issues and emerging opportunities for community-based research at Colorado College.
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SO290 -- Socio-Economic Development in Contemporary Cuba
SO290 -- Global Sustainable Development in Theory and Practice
SO301 -- Quantitative Research Methods
SO316 -- Development and Underdevelopment in Africa
SO318 -- Politics, Inequality, and Social Policy
SO451 -- Senior Seminar: "The Wire"
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Henri Matisse (French,1869–1954). La Musique , 1939. Oil on canvas,45 3/8 x 45 3/8 inches (115.3x 115.3cm). Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York;Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1940 (RCA1940:13).© Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
© Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.
French, 1869-1954
oil on canvas
support: 45 3/8 x 45 3/8 inches (115.25 x 115.25 cm); framed: 55 x 55 x 4 inches (139.7 x 139.7 x 10.16 cm)
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1940
This information may change due to ongoing research. Glossary of Terms
Audio Stop for Picasso: The Artist and His Models
Verbal Description Audio
Henri Matisse
La Musique
Oil on canvas, made in 1939
This painting is four and a half feet tall by four and a half feet wide, a perfect square. The viewer's gaze is met by two women seated on brightly pattered cushions on what may be a patio. A combination of interior and exterior space is suggested by a bold red background covered with a bright yellow grid, comprised of roughly 1 inch squares that fills the bottom two thirds of the painting. The top third implies an exterior space as this strip of space has a solid black background on top of which are large flat green tropical plant leaves. The woman on the right side of the painting holds a guitar, on a table top set at the bottom of the work in between both is an open music book.
This work is painted in strong, bold colors. The figures and objects are flattened and linear. While the colors feel very solid, portions of the painting reveal the artists fluid brushstrokes which often move in a systematic direction within the given shape that they fill.
This description will start with the woman holding the guitar. The top of her head rests roughly five inches from the top of the canvas just to the right of center. Her navy blue long sleeve, ankle length pant suit has a sharp v-neck which reveals a cool peach flesh tone. She has chin length, wavy black hair. A few simple black lines create her angled open eyes, thin high arching eyebrows, slender nose and closed lips. Her gaze seems to be focused on the viewer and the corners of her lips curve slightly upward. She has broad shoulders. Her oversized left hand cradles the neck of the guitar and her equally oversized right hand is cupped with her palm facing upward just below the open sound hole of the guitar as though she is strumming the strings. Her torso faces the viewer while she is seated in a bright red lawn chair with a vine and leaf pattern lightly defined by a thin white line. The back of the chair is evident behind her right arm. Her left leg is bent and her left foot rest on-top of the lawn chair, her nose and edge of her pants are out of the picture frame. Her right leg is slightly bent and her large arched foot touches the bottom edge of the canvas. The bottom edge of both pant legs are patterned with upward facing bright yellow triangles.
Aimed at electronic musicians, sound designers and installation artists, Iota is a Max For Live granular looping instrument that wrings endless creative potential out of even the simplest samples, via an inspiring graphically-driven interface.
Conceived and developed by Los Angeles musician, artist and programmer Dillon Bastan, Iota enables spectral regions within samples to be 'windowed', looped, layered and processed for the creation of all kinds of tones, soundscapes, glitches and rhythms.
You start by dragging a source sample into Iota from Live or your operating system – a beat, a vocal, a pad, a found sound–and selecting a region within it to be rendered as a continuous stream of tiny slices. Familiar graphical editing tools are then used to draw, move and resize 'boxes' in the spectrogram, each one defining the length and frequency content of a band-pass filtered loop in a clear and immediately representative visual manner.By arranging and overlapping multiple boxes, you can deconstruct, fragment and dice the original sample to as coarse or fine a degree as you like. Create lots of small loops to atomise and reimagine a percussion clip, for example, or a few larger ones to carve an orchestral string section up into a scintillating multi-dimensional ambience.
Loops can play back free-running or snapped to grid, and each one has its own bank of granular and mix controls, including direction, speed, panning, volume fade and curve, filter type (FFT or resonant) and a feedback delay effect. Changes made to these parameters, as well as movement of loop boxes, can be recorded and replayed by the onboard automation system, making it easy to apply intricately evolving timbral changes.
Three playback modes let you lock Iota to Live's transport for synced playback, unlock it to play back autonomously and endlessly – ideal for unattended sound installations –or control individual loops using Push or a MIDI keyboard.
From evocative ambiences and sinuous textures to finely-sculpted FX and polyrhythmic soundbeds, Iota offers a unique and powerful new approach to granular sound design, with no upper or lower limit in terms of sonic complexity.
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Tronix combines the cinematic depth of animated atmospheres, morphed instruments and electrified percussion with cutting leads, growling basses, and tempo-synced audio loops that forward-thinking producers will appreciate.
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"Friends of Hamas": The Scary-Sounding Pro-Hagel Group That Doesn't Actually Exist
On February 7, Breitbart News's Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro published an explosive-looking story under the headline "Secret Hagel Donor? White House Ducks Question on 'Friends of Hamas.'" Quoting "Senate sources," Shapiro claimed that crucial documents on Hagel's "foreign funding" might be kept from the Senate Armed Services Committe because "one of the names listed is a group purportedly called "Friends of Hamas."
It was a short item, three paragraphs, the third paragraph consisting of White House assistant communications director Eric Schultz blowing off Shapiro. It caught fire on the right in no time. "That is quite the accusation," wrote Moe Lane at RedState. "All they have to do to debunk it is to have Hagel reveal his foreign donors." In the National Review, Andrew Stiles reported that "rumors abound on Capitol Hill that a full disclosure of Hagel's professional ties would reveal financial relationships with a number of 'unsavory' groups, including one purportedly called 'Friends of Hamas.'" Arutz Sheva and Algemeiner, conservative pro-Israel news organizations, ran versions of the story based 100 percent on links to the Shapiro original. On February 7, radio host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Sen. Rand Paul about the Hagel nomination and pushed him on the "Friends of Hamas" story.
HH: Let me bring up one piece of information that Ben Shapiro at Breitbart put out today, which is one of the foreign funders behind Senator Hagel that he has not yet disclosed formally is something called Friends Of Hamas. If that is in fact true, Senator, would that lead you to vote against Mr. Hagel?
RP: You know, I saw that information today, also, and that is more and more concerning. With each day, there are new things coming out.
Paul has since come out against cloture on the nomination. Mike Huckabee, on tour in Israel last week, got asked about "Friends of Hamas" at a press conference. "If it proves true the rumors of Chuck Hagel's having received funds from Friends of Hamas," said the 2008 presidential candidate and current Fox News host, "if that's true then on its face that would disqualify him." On Fox Business, Lou Dobbs interviewed National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy about the Hagel quandary, and "Friends of Hamas" came up again.
MCCARTHY: There was a report that came out last week—not confirmed yet, but we're [i.e., the White House] also not denying it very vigorously—that one of the groups behind the speeches may have been an outfit called Friends of Hamas. That is not going to—
DOBBS: That has a ring to it, doesn't it?
MCCARTHY: Catchy.
Here's the problem: There's no proof that "Friends of Hamas" actually exists. At best, it's an organization so secret that nobody in government has thought to mention its existence. At worst, it's as fake as Manti Te'o's girlfriend. The Treasury Department, which designates sponsors of terror, has done so to many charities tied to Hamas. "Friends of Hamas" is not among them. The State Department doesn't designate it, either. And a bit less holistically, a Lexis search for the group reveals absolutely nothing.
I've been unable to find any Senate staffer who knows where the "Friends" rumor came from, and Dave Reaboi, communications director for the (generally conservative) Center for Security Policy, shared my confusion about the alleged group. "Looking back to the 1990s, there were several groups (some affiliated with Holy Land Foundation, some not) that functioned as fund-raisers," he said in an email. "I wouldn't put it past these people to refer to it this way in private, but I doubt highly that they'd actually call a legit group 'Friends of Hamas.'"
That's probably why nobody has formed a group by that name, and why, after the Atlantic Council released a list of funders, "Friends of Hamas" was nowhere on it. The point of the accusation is that Hagel has criticized Israel, so it's only natural to ask if he's receiving laundered terror money. As the Center for Security Policy's Frank Gaffney put it in the Washington Times:
At this writing and absent the requested disclosure, it cannot be determined whether Mr. Hagel is literally associated with the "friends" of a designated terrorist organization. The mere fact, though, that it seems entirely plausible — given the nominee's record of hostility toward Israel and his affinity for its enemies (including Hamas' longtime sponsor, Iran) — his refusal to make the sort of disclosure expected of all Cabinet appointees should be the last straw for Senate Republicans and Democrats alike.
But the "Friends" accusation goes further than that. It supposes that a pro-terror group exists, and further supposes that the non-existent group would back Hagel somehow. This morning I wrote Shapiro to clear up the accusation. "Have you found any more proof that this group exists?" I asked. "Is it just shorthand for some people who might support Hagel, or a real group?"
"The original story is the entirety of the information I have," he said.
(Many thanks to Emma Roller for some help on this item.)


text: The second of three 25th anniversary GSXR's, the 2010 Suzuki GSX-R600 Limited Edition is a run of 25 motorcycles destined for our friends across the pond in the UK. Helping commemorate 25 years of the GSX-R series, the 25th Anniversary GSX-R600 comes with a retro 1999 World Superbike paint scheme, along with a Yoshimura exhaust system, commemorative top yoke, and a certificate of authenticity. For this sort of exclusivity, British buyers can expect to £8,799, or £1,000 over list price. Photos and more after the jump.


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But I'm going to pause in the fight for a moment and break my self-promise because today I discovered Aaron Bady's astoundingly excellent blog Zunguzungu via a marvelous post Bady wrote at The Valve about Chinua Achebe and the African Writers Series (a post that previously appeared on Zunguzungu).
It's been a long time since I last encountered a blog where the excitement of discovery came from finding someone giving expression to inchoate thoughts I'd never quite found words for, but that happened again and again as I read through Bady's blog, especially the post "When Good People Write Bad Books" and this earlier Achebe post, referencing Norman Rush (whose Mating I adore, or, at least, I adored when I read it about ten years ago) to explore the idea of "great writers" and who has the authority to write about/represent particular cultures in writing -- the discussion in the comments section is as wonderful as the post. Indeed, in one of the comments, Bady sums up what I most respect in fiction far better than I ever have:
...what I find most interesting in Achebe is his attention not to questions of who is right and who is wrong (since every perspective is flawed and mediated) but his exploration of how official truths are produced, which TFA as novel becomes a vehicle for. Or, in Arrow of God, his interest in how official truths get subverted when they don't "work" the way they're supposed to. In both cases, it seems like he manages to make any conception of "representation" take on so much water, so fast, that you're left, like Foucault reading criminology texts, scratching your head and trying to figure out how people come to believe the things they do, instead of trying to figure out what the correct belief should be.It's not all about Africa and African lit -- Bady's interests are wide-ranging and eclectic -- but that's what first captured my interest and attention, so it's what I'm highlighting here. I was taken, too, with Bady's explanation of the blog's title:
In Tanzania, you learn that you're an mzungu when children shout "zunguzungu!" and follow you around, and in California you learn to forget because they aren't there to remind you. But you still are, so I've kept the name, even though I'm now writing about other things. And I won't define what it means, because you can if you want, and words aren't so easily corralled into order as it might sometimes seem, thank goodness. And anyway, it's not such a bad thing to be, really. They were delighted to see me, and I was delighted to see them, if not for the same reasons.
I learned a long time ago that I'm a white guy from the United States, long before I ever left Appalachia. But being called an Mzungu–for out of the mouths of children!–can teach you different things, if you let it. Too many people take the name Mzungu as an insult; but it isn't, not exactly. Tanzanians sometimes use it as a compliment for other Tanzanians; wewe kizungu sana! It isn't that either, not quite. Race is physicial, but "kizungu" is tabia or utamaduni, words that get mistranslated as culture or civilization, but mean something deeper about how and why people relate to other people the way that they do. Some people like to be called "Western," and some people don't; some people have that option and some people don't. But I've taken the name zunguzungu for this blog not as a claim but as a provocation, and a reminder for myself. I'm really not sure what it means, on the deepest level, and I want to remember that ignorance. It also means many different things, so I want to remember that too. But whatever "zunguzungu" is, I know that I am it; the task, then, is to make that "it" into something good.I could keep quoting all night. I won't. I have a z to keep working on before I let myself return to this here province. Meanwhile, you should be reading Aaron Bady.
(Oh, you want to know what I think of Coetzee's Summertime? Well, since I'm here already... It's magnificent and thought-provoking, of course, because I think Coetzee is just about the best living writer in the English language, at least among the living writers of English I know. It's been billed as the third in a trilogy of memoir-novels begun with Boyhood and continued with Youth, but though the "John Coetzee" of those books seems to be roughly the same creature as the "John Coetzee" of Summertime, the book itself is more of a piece with Dairy of a Bad Year [a book I think I underestimated when I first read it] and Elizabeth Costello in the ways it forces readers to become active, even self-aware participants in the meaning-making in a more insistant way than many other books -- indeed, it seems to me that Coetzee is using the fame he gained from winning a second Booker Prize and then a Nobel to question the whole idea of the writer as role model and authority -- an idea he's been questioning pretty much his entire career, but the changed and extraordinary circumstances of his life now give him some particularly powerful tools [in the form of readers' expectations and desires] to work with. I don't think it is a coincidence that Disgrace was his last novel to have a traditional narrative structure [it being the work that got him his second Booker, and the first I have with the word "bestseller" emblazoned on the cover]. I also think Summertime shows how vital the conversations and essays in Doubling the Point are to understanding a lot of what Coetzee is up to, even now, nearly twenty years after that book was put together. Confession and complicity remain powerful concerns for him. More -- hopefully, much more -- on this subject anon...)